Voice mail systems have evolved over the years from simple answering machines using cassette tape cartridges to today's fully digital software driven systems, which have become an essential part of both our personal and business lives. Additionally, our tools for communicating with each other have multiplied to where it is not uncommon for a person to have a home phone, work phone, cell phone, home computer, work computer, and a PDA, such as a Blackberry™ or other handheld device. Even stay-at-home moms will communicate with friends, school, children and spouses using the home phone, their cell phone, and their home computer.
Further, the technologies used to implement these various telecommunications devices have begun to blur together, mostly because of the digital transformation of telephone systems. A still further adaptation is occurring with the blending of voice and data over the same digital networks. The result of these advances is the ability of a person's telephones and computers to communicate with each other and share information. Digital wireless phones and handheld devices are essentially small computers using digital signal processing to enable a user to have voice communications with one another. Moreover, software is available for use on laptop and desktop computers enabling the user to utilize the computer as a telephone.
A problem that has surfaced as a result of the foregoing is the proliferation of multiple voice mail boxes associated with each of these telecommunication devices. For example, a person could have a separate voice mail box they would have to check for each of their home phone, work phone, cell phone, home computer, and work computer. Having to individually access each of these voice mail systems can be a burden. Therefore, what is needed in the art is a system for coalescing a plurality of voice mail systems, providing a user an ability to access all of their voice mail systems from any one of the user's telecommunications devices.